‘Hangover?’ asked Krebs, who was sitting directly across from Rowena in the limo. He’d nodded curtly at her as she got in the car, and that was about it. Michael was super cautious these days. The old gushing about her talents had gone completely, and since she’d arrived in New York he had scarcely complimented her publicly. Rowena had been forced to point out to him that unless he acknowledged that they were at least friends, everyone would assume they were having an affair. You don’t go from red-hot to ice cold without a good reason. God, men were so stupid. Especially the smart ones.
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Joe nodded, grimacing. ‘Went down to Continental Divide. I was on shorts all night.’
‘You’ll pay,’ said Michael, like a stern father.
The singer shrugged as their limo pulled smoothly away into the traffic.
‘What he doesn’t say is that he was up all night with these three girls who - ‘
‘Zach!’ Krebs warned sharply, glancing at their manager, but the guitarist grinned.
‘Barbara don’t give a fuck about that,’ he said, quite accurately.
She nodded, smiling at the producer with elegant ildifference. Rowena marvelled at how changed she was. Just a few months looking after a rock band, and Barbara already understood the first instinctive rules. Like, you don’t mess with your act’s sex life.
‘They can do what they like. They’re not old married men like yoga, Michael,’ Barbara said. And even so I wouldn’t
give afuck, her tone implied.
Krebs grunted.
When the band and Barbara had got deep into a discussion of promotion for the album launch, he finally looked over at Rowena. Cute dress. She looked like a schoolgirl in that dress. Michael felt himself getting aroused. He was disturbed, he’d planned on giving bet up by now. Any longer and something must surely slip, she’d tell Barbara, she’d mention something to Josh, the band would pick up on it. There was no way he couldrisk Debbie finding out.
He loved his wife, and he lived for his sons. The family. It was the most important thing in life, Michael always said. His own parents had provided for’him, but little more; to this day he resented them for it. Ten thousand dollars’ worth of therapy swore his control-freak tendencies came directly from that. And Michael thought it was true. He could remember deciding that if that was the way it was gonna be, then he was going to be in full control. lermanently.
Maybe that was the lure of Rowena Gordon, Krebs ‘
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thought, letting his dark gaze travel slowly up those slender calves, to the shadow under the fall of her skirt, and then further up, as if he could see through the darkness through sheer force of will, please himself by gazing at those pale, supple thighs and the delights that lay between them. There had been many women, some more beautiful, more skilled in bed than Rowena. But few so intelligent as she was. Michael Krebs, like many Jewish men, prized intelligence in everyone, including women. It didn’t scare him off, it attracted him. Amongst other things it meant that Rowena came to him with her eyes open, having understood the hopelessness of her position, but coming to his bed anyway. And maybe that was the lure. His complete control over
her.
I love my wife. I’ve been a good father to my sons, better than my father was to me, Krebs thought, and then Rowena shifted in her seat and caught him staring at her. He watched her instant reaction, the lips parting, the blood rushing to the face, her green eyes glancing at him, then away again, pretending to watch midtown Manhattan through the limo’s tinted windows. His cock hardened in his pants. lang, just like that. He had her again.
The band and Barbara were still jabbering away at each other.
‘Rowena,’ Michael said softly. Her name, a command. She looked at him, her thighs flaming from the feeling that he’d been looking at her, thinking about her, reminding himself of the last things they’d done together. Lust started to lick at her. It had been four days ago, just before the release of the record. Michael had taken her to her apartment on West 67th and made her undress for him in her bedroom, removing her clothes exactly as he instructed. He had been excruciatingly slow, making her wait, turn and move as he directed, so that by the time she was naked Rowena was so aroused she could hardly stand up. Krebs hadsat there, fully clothed, his erection clearly visible under his jeans, and made her just stand before him, naked, while he talked to her about what he was going to do with her and
how, getting Rowena hotter and hotter, until she was weeping with sheer desire, but he’d still made her stand there. She remembered how the combination of being so exposed in front of a clothed man, and what he was saying, and her submission to him, had brought her so close to the brink that when Krebs stood up and came across to her, still not touching her, and had very deliberately walked round her, staring at the whole of her body, her ass, her breasts, her legs, and finally let his gaze trail obviously and slowly between her legs, Rowena’s haunches had shuddered in an uncontrollable movement and she’d climaxed, coming for Michael Krebs when he hadn’t even laid a finger on her.
‘Yes, Michael?’ she replied now, the coolness of her tone belying the wild heat in her belly.
What’s wrong with me? Rowena thought. I can’t even be near the guy without melting all over the seat.
Krebs smiled, his liquid brown eyes refusing to accept her outward calm. ‘Wanna have lunch?’ he asked casually. ‘I can play you the final mixes for the b-sides.’
‘Sure,’ Rowena said, anticipation oozing from every pore.
Oh, love was a drug. It made you higher than acid or ecstasy or anything. Michael, Michael, the universe itself was less important than his smile, he was the first thing she thought of when she woke in the mornings and the last image in her mind at night. There was the trial of setting up the label. The triumph of watching Atomic Mass break. The danger of Topaz Rossi, something Rowena sensed, feared, and knew she’d have to deal with.
But over that and above it was Michael Krcbs, and the heady, maddening passion Rowen felt for him, Love. Like a fine, golden mist, settling over everything. Informing everything she did. The backdrop to life. ‘hat will Krebs think? When can I tell him? What would Michael do? Where is he
HOW?
Yes, she knew he was married. Yes, she knew he had children. Yes, she knew it was wrong.
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But Rowena Gordon didn’t care. She was in love, in that rare, complete thraldom that true first love demands. Anyone who has ever experienced it knows exactly what it’s like. Rowena, as she sat in that car, looking at her married lover, was prepared to sacrifice anything and everything in order to keep him around. Her pride. Her heart. Her principles. Her honour.
‘It’s your turn, I think,’ Michael said, holding her in their private conversation, locking her gaze in his.
‘To buy lunch? Yeah, I think so too,’ Rowena agreed, inflecting her tone with just that subtle shade of extra meaning Michael had used.
They both knew what he meant. That Michael had pleasured Rowena the last time they met, and it was her turn now. She would do what he loved, sweeping her long, fine hair across his body so it teased him with millions of featherlight strokes, then moving down with her lips and her tongue until she reached his groin, then easing the wiry grey hairs around the flat of his stomach, circling the base of his cock until he couldn’t stand it any more, and grabbed her head by the hair, insistently pushing her down on him. Sometimes Rowena licked him first, the tip of her tongue running round the tip of his cock, flicking at the sensitive little triangle just under the crown, and then when the pleasure got too much for him to bear without coming, moving down to the base again, then holding him hard and wet in her hands, using her fingers and tongue to bring him to a crashing orgasm. Other times, she simply responded by taking him deep, deep into her mouth, carefully angling his thickness so it got to the very back of her throat. Michael could only take a little of that before he came, erupting into her with a groan of satisfaction, staggered at how incredible it felt to see this girl swallow him whole. She was so good at sucking cock, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. And she loved it. That was what truly aroused Michael so much that sometimes he woke up in the night, next to his wife, with a raging hard-on for Rowena that refused to go away. Other women would either refuse or grudgingly
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agree to it, as a special favour to their men. You could order a groupie to do what you liked, of course. But that was quid pro quo. Rowena was so into Michael, so wild with lust for him, that she fantasized about doing it to him. She begged for it. And he’d never known anything - not on tour, not with girlfriends, not with his wife - like the rapture he felt when Rowena Gordon was kneeling in front of him, her long blonde hair halfway down her back, her little bud nipples erect, giving him head, her eyes closed in sexual frenzy, making those tiny choking sounds at the back of her throat that drove him fucking crazy, as he rammed himself into her, roughly, foFcing her to take it all in, asking her how he tasted, if she wanted more, if she loved it. Once she’d even reached up blindly, groping for his hands, and he hadn’t known what she wanted until with a fresh rush of sex he understood she was putting them on the back of her
head, asking for it harder, deeper, more. Michael flt his hard-on swelling. Rowena saw it.
A conspiratorial look passed between them, shared desire, shared annoyance at being in company, shared helplessness to do anything about it. And then Rowena grinned, and Krebs winked at her, and they felt a huge surge
of affection and friendship, on top of the desire. Christ, I like him so much, Rowena marvelled. That girl is terrific, Michael thought.
The limo purred to a halt outside the Warners offices, and as it did so, a small crew of photographers ran forward, poised to snap pictures of the band.
‘Get used to it, guys,’ Barbara said, glancing at her producer and A&R girl with evident satisfaction. ‘You’ll need to.’
HEAT STREET-OUT NEXT WEEK, screamed the banner ads.
New British Invasion? asked RIP magazine, giving a picture of Joe space on the cover.
Oh, You Pretty Things, cooed the Village Voice.
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‘What’s heavy metal got that rap and country don’t?’ asked Rolling Stone. ‘Precious little, if recent sales are anything to go by. Except, of course, metal can lay claim to Atomic Mass, a new band from England who are causing a sensation on MTV with “Karla”, the first single on their Krebs-produced debut Heat Street, .out on Warners next week. Playing music brutal enough to appea!to fans of early Metallica, and good-looking enough to steal young girls from the teenybop bands, the act are tipped as the next Led Zeppelin. Can you say crossover?’
Overhyped. Overrated. Over here ran the headline in Westside’s influential music section atop a devastating attack, sneering at alternative fans for falling at the feet of a band ‘snug in the arms of the machine, protected by Warners’ marketing might and Michael Krebs’s Midas touch’. The Wednesday that article ran, the band’s low-key gig at CBGBs was half empty.
‘Fuck ‘em, if they want to stay away because some paper tells them to,’Jake snarled, but he wasn’t used to playing to an audience with gaps in it and it pissed him off.
‘Is Topaz Rossi behind this?’ Josh Oberman demanded from London, spitting with rage. Tve got the fucking TIME and Melody Maker all ready to run articles on Atomic Mass being a heavy metal Suede. And MTV Europe reported the CBGB show on the news.’
‘Yes, she is,’ Rowena said, her anger returning.
‘That bitch!’ her boss swore. ‘Is this her idea of revenge?’
Rowena smiled grimly. ‘Oh, this isn’t Topaz’s revenge,’ she told him. ‘This is just a calling card.’
Topaz needn’t worry herself,. Rowena thought. She was
having enough trouble here without needing any help. Everyone took Atomic Mass seriously. No one took Musica Records seriously.
As the scout who’d signed the flavour of the month, Rowena Gordon was respected, regularly showered with job offers, and had her ass kissed by promoters and agents and anyone who thought she might have some clout with Barbara Lincoln.
As the ‘Managing Director’ - yeah, right! - of Luther Records, the name she’d given to Musica’s new subsidiary in New York, she couldn’t persuade an act to sign with her. No big-time managers would commit their new acts to a European company that was just tinkering around in the United States. No, they were all happy to deal with Musica in Europe, but let a US major sign the act first and then rent it out to Musica for Europe.
The trouble with that was that the US label took a royalty. Just like Musica did when Elektra sold an Atomic Mass single.
And they’d go on missing American repertoire.
And she, Rowena, would have failed.
Rowena looked out at the ligh.ts of Manhattan from Luther’s tiny, cramped offices at the top of a narrow building on Leonard Street, and knew there was no way she was giving up. Michael Krebs lived here, Atomic Mass were tasting their first big success here, and fifty per cent of all the records in the world were sold here. Anyway, she loved New York. She’d made friends in her building, friends in the clubs, friends down at the Marquee, the Bottom Line, and all the other venues where her face was getting known. Josh Oberman had been right about her wanting to change her life.
Here people were interested in what she did, not who her parents were.
Hadn’t Rick Rubin managed it? Rowena reminded herself sternly, after another door slammed in her face. Surely she could do it. All she had to do was find a really talented, really good new band who’d be happy to sign with her despite the risks. A band so’new.they didn’t have a fucking manager.
She stared out at the city. It was the place to be, she could feel that in her bones. Lady Liberty, wasn’t she the patron saint of career girls?
Fuck you, Topaz Rossi, Rowena thought. I’m here to stay. All she had to do was sign a good band. Fast.